1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to the field of device configuration control, and more particularly relates to a system and method for controlling the configuration parameters of systems, such as server systems or networked storage systems.
2. Description of Related Art
A problem with many storage products today relates to when and how configuration changes get updated to their associated storage system. These changes may include configuring IP addresses for ports; adding new storage disks; adding, modifying, or deleting end users; or modifying backup schedules. Most high-end NAS (Network Attached Storage) systems have only one option for configuration changes. Either the changes are activated immediately, or are queued until later, when they are manually activated by a system administrator (hereafter referred to as a user). In other systems, certain changes are activated immediately, while others are queued. This introduces some problems, such as:                Users don't easily know which changes are immediate vs. queued. Some visual indication is usually provided, but it's not a simple model for users to understand this distinction, which varies at the parameter-level throughout the application, not at the system-level. Some pages might even have a mix of immediate and queued settings.        Users are not in control of when changes get activated.        Users may, at least initially or in an emergency, prefer all changes to be activated dynamically and immediately.        Users may want to queue ALL changes if remote or during initial setups. This is essentially the same mode of operation when users manually edit a flat-file configuration and then activate all the changes at once at a later time.        
Some ad ministration consoles immediately update each configuration change. This has proven to be a problem for customers as each change may take a long period of time to complete, making the system inaccessible during this time. Since these systems are clustered, all activity must be synchronized. Therefore, for example, it may take up to 30 minutes to activate the changes.
Therefore a need exists to overcome the problems with the prior art as discussed above, and particularly for an improved method of controlling the configuration parameters of networked storage systems.